Driven Mad (Book 1 in the MAD Series)(An Avengers Fan Fiction)

Betty Ross

Betty awoke to the sound of screams and fighting and thunder and lightning and  battle, the rain from Ororo’s storm splattering on her forehead, the raindrops slamming angrily against her pale skin, like pins and needles poking into her skin. She slowly sat up, feeling blood trickling down her forehead, her head throbbing with a headache. She rubbed her head, wiping away some of the blood from a long gash. She closed her eyes and groaned, trying to piece everything back together.

The last thing she could remember was fighting the transformation into the She-Hulk in Bruce’s arms and prevailing. After that it was nothing but a blur, not remembering how she’d blacked out or what had happened. She blinked a few times, knowing that she needed to get back up. She stretched her neck and limbs, knowing that she didn’t have too long to deal with the pain in her limbs. Everything would go numb soon and she’d let the beast within her loose so the She-Hulk could fight instead of her. Everything would heal back and she’d go on like nothing even happened once she let out her inner demon and it’d all go back to normal.

Betty looked around her and found that she was on top of a tall building, the battlefield below her, a war waging just beneath her on the streets of Manhattan. She found Clint sitting up on his knees, his skin blue, and his wrist swollen with the other hand wrapped around it. She watched intently as he wrapped ice around his swollen wrist, the frozen water wrapping itself around the reddened skin…

Betty looked around the roof, searching for one person, just the one person that mattered. She knew that she needed to find him, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. She forced herself up off of the ground, forcing herself to dizzily stand up, and her head spinning. She looked around, down into the battlefield of the war that waged around her. The world was blurred, too blurred from her wounds to make out anything. She knew that she probably had a concussion, nothing too terribly serious but it was still there. It was nothing that releasing the She-Hulk couldn’t fix, but she still needed to find him…

Then Betty realized something.

The Red Hulk was gone too.

What had the Red Hulk done to Bruce? Had that imposter of a beast hurt her Bruce? Had it hauled him away against his will? Had Bruce sacrificed himself to protect her and Clint? Where had he gone? What had happened while she’d been passed out? Where had Bruce disappeared to? Why hadn’t the other Avengers saved him if he had been hurt?

Had the Red Hulk killed her Bruce?

Betty cursed silently to herself, angry at herself for falling asleep and not being able help him, to save him. She paced back and forth, burying her face in her hands, rubbing her forehead worriedly. Her converse shoes thudded hard against the concrete of the roof, the sound of it being the only thing she could hear over the ringing in her ears and her hammering heart beat. She could sense Clint’s eyes on her, but she didn’t care about him. She didn’t care about anybody but Bruce.

Then a single sound broke through the ringing in her ears and the loud hammering of her heart. It was a familiar sound, a sound that she’d heard a million times, a sound that she’d never forget. It was a deafening sound, one that could rattle the eardrums of anyone in a ten mile radius. It was a sound that she had once feared but had grown to love, grown fond of over the years.

It was the Hulk’s deafening roar.

Betty knew that it was Bruce. No one else could have that roar, not even the Red Hulk, it simply wasn’t possible to copy that kind of rage. It was definitely Bruce, Betty just knew it. She couldn’t explain how she knew it, but she just did. It was one of those things that you just knew and you couldn’t ever explain, like how one would know that two plus two equals four but it’s quite impossible to explain how a person could come to that conclusion. Betty simply knew that it was Bruce.